Saturday, 16 May 2015

In a world where all
the fictions ever written coalesce into a rich mosaic, it’s 1975. Janni
Dakkar, pirate queen of Lincoln Island and head of the fabled Nemo
family, is eighty years old and beginning to display a tenuous grasp on
reality. Pursuing shadows from her past — or her imagination — she
embarks on what may be a final voyage down the vastness of the Amazon, a
last attempt to put to rest the blood-drenched spectres of old. With
allies and adversaries old and new, we accompany an aging predator on
her obsessive trek into the cultural landscape of a strange new
continent, from the ruined city of Yu-Atlanchi to the fabulous plateau
of Maple White Land. As the dark threads in her narrative are drawn into
an inescapable web, Captain Nemo leads her hearse-black Nautilus in a
desperate raid on horrors believed dead for decades. Through the exotic
spectacle of an imagined South America, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
steer their fifty-year-long Nemo trilogy to its remarkable conclusion,
borne upon a River of Ghosts.

And
with this volume - the third - the story of Janni Nemo comes to a close
and the next inheritor of the mantle takes their place.

This
time out it's a much more straight forward read - particularly in
comparison to it's immediate predecessor for which you needed a handy
German to translate large swathes of the dialogue. Here, the aged and
dying Nemo sets out on one last adventure to investigate the apparent
reappearance of Ayesha despite having killed her in the previous
volume's Germany of Adenoid Hynkel.

As ever the references abound
and as ever I'm missing loads of them but a few of the more obvious ones
include The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Stepford Wives,
Desperate Dan and The Lost World.This isn't Moore at his most
engrossing it's simply Moore cutting loose and letting the grand lady
have the blood and fire send off and decisive conclusion she deserves
(and desires). O'Neill is, as ever, flawless.An explosive final chapter to
an excellent series. Hopefully not the last we'll see of the League
though as it's easily one of my favourite things.

btw - Jess Nevins' always invaluable annotations to this volume can be found here

Welcome...

...to this repository of imaginings upon the vagaries of steam.Please leave your cloak and hat with the maid and set awhile with brandy and cigar and peruse my brief reflections upon the fanciful and oft-time scandalous activities of the individuals depicted in the pages of these penny-dreadfuls and in the flickers of the zoetropic daguerrotypes.